


remember him, whom passion's power (had made thee mine)

by what_on_io



Series: never give all the heart (for love) [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Explicit Sexual Content, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, Love/Hate, M/M, More angst, NEW CHAPTER ADDED, Oral Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, Soul-Searching, in case you missed it, ridiculous situations, so much angst you wouldn't believe, talking about feelings, this is just a huge angst-fest i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 15:10:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11382756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_on_io/pseuds/what_on_io
Summary: “You being here is dangerous. Nora should have come alone. If Elder Maxson finds out-“A lazy grin drifts across Hancock’s face at that. “So that’s why you dragged me in here. ‘Cause you’re afraid I’ll go blabbing to your higher-ups,” he says slowly. Danse’s hands clench into fists at his sides, a red flush creeping slowly up from his collarbone to his jaw. He looks delectable even here, in the shadowy room he probably thinks of as home, flight suit unzipped to halfway down his chest to reveal a thatch of hair there."You wouldn't dare."Hancock dares to set foot on the Prydwen, much to Danse's dissatisfaction. Angry, then not-so-angry, sex ensues.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please excuse any sloppy editing on my behalf - mistakes will be rectified in the next few days. Also, sorry about how long this took! Exams + essay deadlines + dissertation proposal writing took everything out of me. Have some Danse/Hancock smut to make up for it?
> 
> I'm really nervous about posting this. Please don't judge me for my awful porn. 
> 
> Title from Byron.

“Abominations on the bridge, sir!”

The words, coming from a young squire somewhere down below him, are enough to startle a distracted Paladin Danse from his reverie. His right hand stutters in the middle of scrubbing down his power armour, grease cloth slipping from his grasp, and he hastily straightens from his crouch before anyone notices his slip.

The squire’s on the deck below, bellowing up the stairs looking for all the world like a ragged wastelander instead of a soldier prepared to climb the ranks. He isn’t calling to anyone in particular - seems keen to announce his findings to anyone who’ll listen, actually, but Danse feels the words like a punch to the gut. Caught halfway between pausing to reprimand the squire for his lack of decorum on the Prydwen and halfway between running for his life, Danse chooses to listen to the swirling in his gut, demanding he find out exactly who - _what_ \- might be waiting for him on the bridge.

He walks as calmly as he can to the exit, keeping a brisk pace that hardly looks out of place among his fellow soldiers. He’s just going to investigate, after all, to get rid of the intruders as efficiently as possible. Haylen wiggles her eyebrows at him on his way past, clearly looking for a conversation, but he elbows past her with only a slight twinge of guilt. Haylen can wait. Potentially life-ruining ghouls? Not so much.

“Not sure what you think you’re doing bringing those things aboard, Knight, but they’ll need to be removed from the premises right away. Don’t make me shoot all three of you, Maxson’ll have my head-“

“Told ya this was a bad idea, sister.”

“This is ridiculous. John, let me handle this. I need to speak to this Maxson right now, ya hear me? I’m the knight who saved your asses down in Cambridge, least you can do is- Ah, here we are! Paladin Danse, nice to see you again!” Nora calls. “Perhaps you could tell your guard dogs to get their damn guns out of my face!”

She’s the first person he sees. Nora’s standing with a lowered laser rifle braced in her hands, face heated slightly at the altercation, and probably at the fact that the Lancer-Knight closest to her has the barrel of his rifle shoved up in her sightline. Behind her stands a Gen-2 synth wearing a trench coat and fedora, amber eyes glinting menacingly in the twilight, one arm wrapped protectively around Nora’s front. Patches of silicon are missing from its face, and the skin of one hand has been completely ripped away to reveal a metal skeleton beneath, like a robot arachnid with several severed legs. It’s disgusting. Worse, somehow, than the Gen-3s Danse has come across - a primitive robot wearing clothes, pretending it’s a human. It’s sick.

Hancock he spies last, half-shadowed by the others. The ghoul’s tricorn hat is pulled down to cast his face in darkness, his head bowed to avoid meeting anyone’s gaze. _Good_ , Danse thinks, _best he learn his place at long last_.

“Knight,” Danse greets, grateful his voice emerges without shaking. Nora tucks her own gun away with a grin, hands immediately going to rest on her hips. It’s hardly becoming of a soldier, but she’s never been one for order, and now is hardly the time-

“I have business with Maxson, and your people are making my job really fuckin’ hard, Danse. Let us pass.”

“Maxson will see you in private, Knight. The abominations need to leave. That ghoul could turn feral at any moment, and we won’t condone Institute spies aboard the Prydwen. You’re fucking lucky we didn’t shoot on sight,” one of the Lancer-Knights interrupts.

“Bullshit!” Nora erupts. “Look, none of us have time for this shit right now. I’m assuming your Elder dragged me up here for a reason - meaning he needs my help. So do a lot of people. I can leave as quickly as I came, trust me, but that means your ticket outta whatever mess you’re in leaves too.”

“They can stay,” Danse blurts, surprising himself. The Brotherhood needs the assistance, he tells himself, and Nora has proven herself more than worthy so far. They can trust her, at least, even if he’d prefer to throw the other two overboard. Danse didn’t offer to be her sponsor for nothing.

The Lancer-Knights grumble a bit but relent, moving aside to let Nora pass. As she goes for the doors Danse halts her with a hand on her elbow, leaning in close to hiss, “Did you bring them here to purposely rile us? Couldn’t find any better travelling partners than a junkie ghoul and a filthy synth?”

“And here I was thinking you’d gone soft on me, Danse,” Nora replies with a smirk. He’d call her expression playful if there weren’t something cold burning white in her eyes. “You know, there’s another gang of insane fascists trying to _cleanse the Commonwealth_ around here too. They’re called the _Institute_.” Spitting the last words at his feet, she pushes straight past him and heads for the door, letting the metal slam shut behind her. Danse has never felt more humiliated in his entire life - berated by someone of a lower rank, in front of the very Lancer-Knights he’s just pissed off. And with Hancock standing so close, with everything he could tell Maxson-

Not that he’s getting anywhere close to Maxson. Danse will see to that.

* * *

The Brotherhood might be assholes, Hancock thinks, but hell if he doesn’t want an airship like this. It could house all of Goodneighbor and then some, and he could set up shop right at the top deck and make his speeches from the balcony-

“You think they spend recreational hours collecting innocents and flinging them into the abyss?” Nick asks, peering over the edge of a railing down into the sea below. Hancock grins, imagining lining up the tin cans and giving ‘em a grand ol’ shove into dead space. It soothes his frazzled nerves a little.

“Probably. I’d watch our backs, Nicky, unless you fancy bein’ next-“

“Ghoul.”

No mistaking whose voice that is, and Hancock would be lying if he said it didn’t send a little thrill down his spine. He hasn’t seen Danse properly since the last time he was in Goodneighbor, and enough has happened since then to make his head spin, enough that he could say no to Danse now, if he wanted. He could take Nick’s hand right here, or peck a kiss to his cheek, and maybe that would be enough to give the paladin pause.

“S’up, Danse?” he asks instead, because Nick Valentine deserves better than his stupid games. It’s already a power trip to be in Danse’s territory instead of Hancock’s, like he’s invading somehow just by breathing the Brotherhood’s precious oxygen supply.

“I need a word.”

“Which one? I can think of a few at the moment-“

“John,” Nick says quietly, and then he does take Hancock’s hand, squeezing it briefly enough so Danse doesn’t see. “Maybe you should hear him out.” One of Nick’s hands, the metal one, goes to rest gently at the base of Hancock’s spine.

“ _Maybe_ he’s an ass who doesn’t deserve-”

“Look, it won’t take long. Just come with me.” Danse grumbles, and it’s such a familiar notion, him taking control, that Hancock feels his feet move without his brain’s permission.

“Alright. A word, but you better make it quick - Nora sees you off duty and she might think of reporting you to that Elder of yours,” Hancock says, releasing Nick’s hand with a final squeeze. Danse’s face pales a little, and he figures maybe he’s touched a nerve, but the paladin turns away before he can pick at him any further, beginning to weave through the soldiers moving across the deck.

He moves with ease, like he was born among these ranks, hardly seeming to brush anyone on his way past. The same can’t be said for Hancock, who’s all elbows and knees - once purposely, at the hiss of _fuckin’ feral_ from a nearby sentinel - as Danse leads them towards the same doors Nora just passed through.

He feels a twinge of guilt at leaving Valentine behind, but then Nick had urged him to go with that little smile he saves just for John. Like everything might just work out.

 _Heh_ , Hancock thinks miserably, _fat chance of that_.

They wind up in a metal corridor with a couple doors leading off it. It’s like being trapped in a huge suit of power armour, Hancock muses, feeling weirdly claustrophobic. Must be what it’s like down in those Vaults, where Nora came from.

“Through here,” Danse instructs, and Hancock can only follow blindly; if Danse were searching for a nice secure place to off him on the down-low, this maze of rooms would probably be as good as any. Although, knowing the Brotherhood, the other soldiers would probably want to form a queue and join in.

They emerge in a small room with a cot on one side and a couple lockers on the other, a desk crammed in by the door. A few personal effects - if you can call a few loose screws and fusion cores personal - lie scattered across the desk’s surface, and there’s a scrunched up towel lying across Danse’s mattress.

Because that’s what this is. Danse’s quarters.

“What do you need, Paladin?” Hancock asks with a smirk, wandering over to stand by the bed. It’s neatly made, sheets tucked under the mattress, pillows arranged at perfect right angles. The whole room’s a bit sad. He trails a ragged hand across the sheets, just for the furrow it forms in Danse’s brow.

“I need you to stay away from the Prydwen in future.” That’s not what Hancock was expecting. What he _was_ expecting was to be roughly bent over the desk and have his ass pounded until he lost the ability to form words. Or maybe shoved to his knees so Danse can fuck his mouth. One of the two.

“What, so you get to invade my town with your guns and your soldiers, and I can’t show up here with a couple of friends? Hardly seems fair, Dansey.”

“They’re completely different things. We were sent to your cessp- to Goodneighbor on orders. In the interests of public safety. You’re contaminating the environment the Brotherhood of Steel have worked to keep respectable, the pinnacle of our command system-“

“Face it, sweetheart. There ain’t a jot of difference and you know it. Public safety my ass.”

“You being here is dangerous. Nora should have come alone. If Elder Maxson finds out-“

A lazy grin drifts across Hancock’s face at that. “So that’s why you dragged me in here. ‘Cause you’re afraid I’ll go blabbing to your higher-ups,” he says slowly. Danse’s hands clench into fists at his sides, a red flush creeping slowly up from his collarbone to his jaw. He looks delectable even here, in the shadowy room he probably thinks of as home, flight suit unzipped to halfway down his chest to reveal a thatch of hair there, glistening with sweat. Bastard’s probably been working out all morning - Hancock gets a sudden involuntary visual of Danse on all fours, ready to spring into a press-up. He feels a flutter in his pants at the thought.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Danse says. Hancock startles a bit - he’d half lost track of this conversation, too distracted by the idea of Danse doing crunches. No wonder he’s such a tight-ass-

“Wouldn’t I?” Hancock smirks, enjoying the way the tips of the other man’s ears have turned pink. Danse’s entire body is tensed like a coil - any minute now he’ll spring on Hancock and pummel him into the floor until he ain’t tattling to nobody, and he thinks briefly of Nick outside with worry churning in his gut.

“Maxson knows me. The word of a ghoul isn’t going to count for anything against one of his most respected paladins. Nobody would believe you, you understand?” The words are calculated, weighed carefully before they emerge, but Danse’s rigid posture is speaking a whole different language. He still hasn’t unclenched his fists - Hancock can almost see the crescent moons indented into pale flesh.

“Sure, Danse. I understand. Still, that little show you put on out there? Vouching for us? Dragging me off to your bedroom? A couple rumours here and there, and maybe the word of a ‘respected paladin’ don’t count for much anymore…”

“I won’t be talked down to by a ghoul and his dirty synth _friend_ -”

Hancock hums low in his throat, taking a tiny step forward just to see if Danse backs off. The other man stands his ground like a champ, teeth gritted so hard Hancock can see the muscles in his jaw twitching. “See, sunshine, y’know what I think?”

Danse’s pink tongue peeks out to wet cracked lips. His gaze is fluttery now, darting left to right and then back again, as if he’s contemplating fleeing. Hancock steps closer, close enough to place a rough hand on the other man’s cheek and lean in close to whisper, “I think this turns you on. Me bein’ here, in your beloved Brotherhood airship. Breaking all sorts’a rules.”

Danse’s mouth opens just slightly, preparing for an argument only to be halted by Hancock’s index finger pressing lightly against his lips. He looks stunned by the touch, that Hancock’s dared to put hands on him but he also doesn’t throw him off, which Hancock takes as a good sign. A sign that maybe he’s not so far off the mark after all.

“Maybe it makes you hard, the thought of someone walking in on us. Your precious Elder Maxson, maybe? Maybe the thought of him watching from the doorway while I take you in my mouth, frozen from the shock of it all, maybe that makes your cock throb-“

“Shut up,” Danse grits out. He’s bright red in the face now, fingers clenched tight, and a growing bulge in the front of his pants. Hancock grins wider. This is the first time the paladin has ever allowed his upper hand to falter, and it feels so fuckin’ good to be on more familiar footing after all this time. Nice to feel like a player in this particular game, instead of just bein’ strung along for the ride. Hancock thinks back, briefly, to the first time they’d done this, under the cover of darkness, over the desk in his office after having a rehash of this same argument, the _get the fuck outta my town before I shove your gun so far up your ass it’ll come outta your throat_ kinda argument. That time Danse cracked like an egg, slammed Hancock up against the wall and bit so hard into his neck he saw stars, and a lovely purple bruise in the mirror the next morning.

Nothing much else for it now, ‘cept to find that same edge and sent Danse careening right over the chasm.

“Caught with a ghoul in your bed, what _would_ he say?”

“You know nothing,” Danse growls.

And then he sinks to his knees at Hancock’s feet so Hancock can’t see his burning face anymore, only a dark head of hair. At first Hancock’s sure he’s pushed too far, sent Danse spiralling into a nervous breakdown of sobbing and begging, and he’s about to apologise and back the fuck off when Danse’s fingers scrabble for his belt.

Hancock freezes, stunned. By the time he regains the use of his limbs the belt’s already been flung aside and Danse is shoving his trousers down to his ankles, and-

Danse’s mouth is at his cock, hot and wet through only a thin layer of underwear, and so goddamn unexpected it drags a cry from Hancock’s throat. More surprising is the fact that Danse doesn’t tell him to shut the fuck up, doesn’t silence him with a hand over his mouth. He just keeps lapping at Hancock through the fabric, that lithe tongue just this side of _too much_ and stubble scratching lightly against the most sensitive areas of Hancock’s flesh until he’s fully hard. Only then does Danse slide two fingers under his waistband to tug the pants down, allowing Hancock’s dick to spring free of its confines and stand proud in front of Danse’s face. There’s silence for a moment, stillness. Hancock doesn’t miss Danse’s Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows compulsively, suddenly nervous, and that tongue is out to wet dry lips again like he’s never done this before.

“Hey. Hey,” Hancock manages, voice emerging raspier than usual. He drops his fingers to Danse’s chin, tips his face up slightly to meet Hancock’s gaze, “You don’t have to.” He strokes his thumb along the man’s jawbone, tries to show it in his eyes, that he’ll leave and never come back if that’s what Danse really wants, but a sudden resolve lights up behind Danse’s gaze and he swallows Hancock’s length down with a smirk.

A fucking smirk.

The first seconds of being inside of that mouth almost brings Hancock to a disappointingly brief climax. He just manages to get a handle on himself at the last moment, sucking in a tight inhale, dragging oxygen to his brain. _Fuck_.

It’s all Hancock can do not to fist his fingers in Danse’s hair and drag him closer still. He feels his hands inching towards the other man’s head anyway, screaming at himself to go slow, dammit, Danse hasn’t done this before and God if Hancock can get the man to budge just a couple inches on the state of their… whatever this is, it’ll be progress. So he clutches at the nearest thing he can find, which happens to be the towel Danse has flung aside on the bed, and prides himself on not being as much of a dick as the paladin would have been if their roles were reversed.

All that goes out the window when Danse slides him into the back of his throat.

It’s clear he’s inexperienced - there’s a slight hint of teeth, and Danse is obviously pushing himself too far too quickly, instead of going slow to figure out what feels good for both of them.

Truthfully, Hancock wouldn’t have expected anything else from a devout Brotherhood soldier, but Atom, there’s something to be said for enthusiasm - Danse works his cock like a damn lollipop. He swirls his tongue suddenly around the base, then in one swift movement swallows so much of his length down that his nose is almost at Hancock’s hipbone, despite the tears collecting in the corners of his eyes from tamping down on his gag reflex. Hancock does thread his fingers through Danse’s dark hair then, but only to ease him off a little, stop him from choking. The strands are softer than he expected between his ruined hands, and Danse’s gaze flicks inquisitively upwards.

He isn’t immediately thrown off. In fact Danse seems to half-relish the touch, and it feels strangely like when he lets Hancock adjust to their fucking, something human underneath all this posturing. Hancock dares to slip a thumb down to stroke along Danse’s forehead, but Danse’s hands move up instinctively to grab at Hancock’s own and the ghoul moves back, fearful of pushing too far.

“Nnngh,” Danse grumbles, mouth too full to produce real words. He’s scrabbling for something though, and Hancock nearly steps back out of reach to let the other man breathe before he realises what Danse wants is his _hands_.

For a second time stops, and they’re just holding hands in a dark room on the Prydwen, Hancock’s cock still in Danse’s mouth. Then Danse slowly brings Hancock’s scarred fingers to rest in his hair again, letting him control the movement.

Danse leans back to breathe for a second, allowing Hancock to slip free of his lips. “You don’t have to hold back,” he mumbles. “I can take it.”

“I’m sure you can, Paladin,” Hancock says, breath coming in short bursts. “But this is fine for now.”

“I know what you’re really capable of. I’ve seen ferals, I know what you’re hiding under the coat and hat, ghoul-“

“Shh,” Hancock urges, and goes back to stroking his hair gently. “Don’t ruin this.” He’s almost pleading, which brings a humiliating blush to ridged cheeks. Danse looks surprised, then ashamed.

“I can make this good for you,” he offers after a minute of contemplation. “I may be inexperienced but if you show me what you like-“

“You’re doing fine. Just- less of the deep-throatin’, yeah? You don’t have to push yourself further than you’re willing to go.”

Danse furrows his brow a bit at that, but dutifully goes back to lapping at the head of Hancock’s dick, alternating between sharp sucks and languid strokes of his tongue to the underside. Hancock can feel himself creeping closer to the edge, and when Danse’s tongue goes to press against his balls he lets out an involuntary groan, his pulse speeding up under the paladin’s ministrations.

“I’m close,” he warns. “Better back off unless you want this in your mouth, sunshine.”

“Mmm,” Danse hums. The vibrations send a shock fizzling down Hancock’s length, straight to his balls, and he can feel himself drawing inward, and fuck unless Danse moves _now_ -

Hancock comes with a cry, spilling into the heat of Danse’s mouth. The other man only swallows - through the stars clouding his vision Hancock can just about see his throat working, gulping against the current. It feels like the longest orgasm of Hancock’s life - so long that Danse chokes a little and has to draw back to wipe his mouth with the back of a hand, leaving Hancock to wring out the last of his climax by hand.

They’re both panting when it’s over, and Hancock slips a shaky hand back into Danse’s hair to tip his head back, make sure he’s okay. He looks exhausted but pleased with himself, slightly smug, and when Hancock kneels by his side to unzip his flight suit the rest of the way and work his cock, he finds him already swelled to full hardness.

“Gorgeous,” Hancock tells him as he jerks him off roughly, with only the remnants of his own come as lubricant. Danse glows at the praise, turning a deep shade of purple that’s probably only a side effect of being turned on by the encouragement of a ghoul. His own fingers tangle with Hancock’s and they find a rhythm together, hard and fast, and when Danse comes it’s with a time-halting cry of _Hancock!_ , muffled by his own teeth clamping down on his forearm, face bunched up in agonising ecstasy.

They collapse side-by-side, breathing hard. Danse’s teeth slowly release his arm to leave a deep indigo bruise in their wake, still glittering with saliva. Hancock suppresses the absurd urge to kiss the wound - their strange role-reversal is over; there’s no more room for whispered encouragement or instinctual tenderness between the embarrassment radiating from the paladin and the tension growing like mould underneath them.

“You can’t tell Elder Maxson,” Danse says eventually, when they’ve both gotten their breath back. “The Brotherhood of Steel is the only home I’ve ever known. I’m not willing to be exiled from that.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath and exhales so hard Hancock can feel the draught on his own skin. At first it seems like he’s done talking, until Hancock shifts a little as though preparing to leave, give him space.

“Until I joined up in Rivet City, I hadn’t known order, I made my living as a desperate scavenger. I had no purpose, no direction. No way of knowing I’d survive one day from the next, that I wouldn’t die at the hands of some lowlife trader just for the scrap I was carrying in my pack.’

“Before the Brotherhood there was only one good thing in my life, and he came with me as soon as the Brotherhood shipped into town. We were eager to make something of our lives, the both of us, to make a difference. Help people. I guess you’d call us naive.”

Hancock isn’t sure what to say to that, so he keeps quiet, only dragging Danse’s towel off the bed to cover them both. This conversation feels a bit too serious to have while both their cocks are hanging flaccid between their thighs, and Hancock’s hardly enthused about having any more of his ruined flesh on display than necessary when it’s clear Danse already can’t look at him.

“My friend - Cutler - he was captured. Super mutants. We’d hardly been with the Brotherhood a year, and there was nothing I could do. I should’ve been there, should’ve kept him safe, but-“ Another breath, shakier this time. “He was exposed to a virus, something chemically engineered. Would have been avoidable if some bastards hadn’t thought to fuck around with nature.”

It’s the first time he’s heard Danse swear outside of the bedroom, and it makes something inside Hancock pulse deep and fierce, screwing his hands into fists so he doesn’t reach out and touch the other man. Danse carries on like he’s oblivious to Hancock’s inner turmoil, teeth gritted and jaw set, pained beyond the reach of human touch anyway.

“He turned into one of them. He was senseless. Raging. He- _it_ didn’t recognise me even when I stood straight in front of its face. Reasoning with it was futile, so I didn’t even try.” He does look at Hancock, then, his gaze piercing right through him. “Cutler was a good man, an honest man. He wanted to save people - hell, he did save people. And I shot him point-blank in the throat.”

“I’m sorry,” Hancock croaks, wishing he could scrabble in his pockets for some Mentats, for the right thing to say. More guiltily, he wishes for Jet, to slow the world down so he can be in this room with Danse longer, while they’re close and he feels like a person for the first time in their acquaintance. He’s an ass just for thinking it, for wanting to prolong the other man’s pain, but Hancock never claimed to be an angel, and Danse is almost leaning into him-

“The Brotherhood took from me, I won’t deny that. We aren’t perfect. But they gave me a home when I was alone and desperate, when Cutler was gone. They helped me deal with the guilt, to process it. This is the only home I’ve ever known, and I’ll be damned if I let you - if I let _anyone_ \- take that from me. I’m still not going to beg you, but I hope this is enough. Without the Brotherhood, I’m nothing.”

“That’s not true,” Hancock says immediately. “But look, I’m not gonna tell anyone anythin’, okay? You knew that from the start.”

Danse hums slightly, whether in agreement or exhaustion, Hancock isn’t sure. In the stillness of Danse’s bedroom, Hancock pats his bare chest and, in the time it takes for a breath, leans over to press a tiny fluttering kiss to the side of Danse’s mouth, the only one he’s ever been allowed.

“Don’t let them take you over, Danse. There’s a good man in there, underneath all that metal.”

And when Hancock’s fully dressed again and making his way out of the room, Danse smiles like he just might believe it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took me so long, and also because it's awful. Like, it's a mess. But alas! I tried my best. Any errors are my own and will be edited tomorrow once I've taken a more thorough look at this, but I wanted to post it before bed. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Danse, in an ideal world, would spend the next few days moping about the Prydwen, working on his power armour and drinking with Rhys. A world in which he has just lowered himself to sucking off a ghoul, however, is far from ideal, and as it happens Maxson calls for him a few minutes after Hancock leaves, forcing an already irate Danse to his feet.

  
He yanks his uniform back on unceremoniously, doing up the zipper and buckles as roughly as he can. He feels sick; there’s a horrible churning in the pit of his stomach - from the rads, probably, _why_ had he been fool enough to swallow, of all the godforsaken things - and the back of his throat is scratchy, the taste of the ghoul’s cock still burned into his tongue.

  
He can't think about it. Not while he stands to attention in front of the Elder; not later, when he’s sent off in a vertibird with Nora. The other two have, thankfully, headed back to Sanctuary - no point riling the Brotherhood more, not after the grilling Maxson just gave her. Plus, Nora babbles as they descend on Fort Strong, Hancock had said something about needing alone time with Valentine. The synth, apparently - a detective, Nora informs him, helping her locate her missing son. 

  
Danse doesn’t tell her that robots don’t have names. Doesn’t tell her that this ‘detective’ of hers will as likely sell her out to the Institute before he’ll help her.

  
What he does tell her is: “There’re mutants down there, you’ll want to man the machine gun.” Later, he tells her to stay close, the Fort is swarming with freaks, and he isn’t certain she can handle herself yet. And then, when they’re done flushing the fort of muties and the armoury is secure, he congratulates her on a job well done with an awkward pat on the shoulder, and watches her leave him without so much as a backwards glance.

  
The first signs of a headache pulsing at Danse’s temples arrives on the return vertibird, once he’s finished being useful for the moment and the adrenaline from the mission has faded. The migraines are getting more and more regular - Danse knows he’s lucky to have avoided being crippled by one in the middle of a stake-out, when the hum of danger is only that: a hum. So far he’s doing an adequate job of hiding the flashes of pain from his fellow soldiers - blaming it on fresh injuries that are easily patched up, making excuses of being tired when they’re off-duty. Danse is stronger than a little headache and Cade can’t do anything anyway - he tried to blow Danse off with pills last time, pills that did nothing but knock him out for several hours. And with sleep comes nightmares, Danse knows all too well.

  
Besides, if Maxson got wind of the headaches he’d have Danse removed from active duty, and rest only exacerbates the thoughts he can repress in the field.

  
Haylen’s waiting for him outside his quarters when he arrives back on the Prydwen, already in her civvies. “Danse!” she greets, punching him lightly in the arm. “How’d it go? How’s our new recruit doing?”

  
“Scribe,” he offers in return, a hand going to rub the back of his neck awkwardly. The temptation to massage the pain out of his temples is almost overwhelming, but he keeps it at bay. “The armoury’s secure, the mission was a success. And you’re already aware of Knight Nora’s strength; Maxson hinted she’ll climb the ranks quickly.” _If she can keep her tongue inside her mouth for more than five damn minutes_ , he thinks, but he knows that Haylen will only smirk at Nora’s acerbic wit and tell him to lighten up.

  
“Ah, Danse, you like her! Finally, God, I thought we’d never recruit anyone up to your crazy standards.”

  
“You know you’re more than capable too, Haylen,” Danse says, although he’s certain she _does_ already know.

  
The woman grins at that, flushing a little pink. Haylen’s a nice girl - strong, capable, pretty. Sometimes Danse wonders why he can’t just fall for her. It’d be a hell of a lot less complicated than whatever he’s currently tangled up in - just the thought of the ghoul’s skin on his own simultaneously turns Danse’s stomach and makes his cock twitch. It’s revolting. It’s wrong. Hancock’s everything the Brotherhood stand against - an anarchic junkie ghoul running a town full of synths and other assorted freaks. Just imagining Haylen’s face if she knew-

  
“You okay there, Danse? You look like you could use a stiff drink. I thought you said the mission was fine?”

  
“It was, soldier. I apologise, I’m… not feeling myself.” His left hand has gone to his head without Danse’s permission, rubbing the skin there in slow circles. He half-considers going to Cade, and then imagines receiving a full medical after whatever he’s picked up from having the ghoul’s cock in his mouth, and thinks better of it. 

  
“C’mon, you deserve the night off after today. What say you to a game of pool and a whiskey?”

  
Danse considers turning Haylen down, imagines the sad way her expression will fall when he retreats into his paladin face, as she’s dubbed it. He sighs, feeling the heaviness in his limbs from being in power armour all day. “That sounds perfect.”

* * *

  
The night’s an enjoyable one. After nightfall most of the soldiers get off duty, and the bridge staff switch around on watch, so they’re joined by Rhys and Ingram a few hours after Danse beats Haylen at pool. Someone’s put a holotape of music on and someone else has set up an impromptu game of beer pong with a few cups of Bobrov’s commandeered from Diamond City. Danse situates himself on one of the couches with a drink in hand and watches Rhys drunkenly attempt to slide Haylen into his lap without her noticing.

  
It strikes him then, how much he’d miss this. The common area lights up after dark, swing music low enough not to spike his headache, the rumble of chatter filling the room more comforting than irritating. Maxson’ll make his rounds later, maybe join them for a short drink before heading off to bed. Danse enjoys the routine of it all, enjoys knowing what each day aboard the airship will bring, knowing he has a place among it all and that his place means he’s helping people every day. It’s comforting to know he has a roof over his head, thick metal beneath his boots and a bed to fall into each night. It’s a lot more than most people in the wasteland get - a lot more than Danse himself had before he signed up.

  
He thinks briefly of Cutler, back when they both served together. A blissful year by anyone’s standards - Danse remembers the feeling of the future stretching on ahead of them both, filled with possibility. He imagined himself climbing the ranks, becoming a sentinel one day, second-in-command to the Elder with Cutler by his side. They’d stayed up late at night to talk about it all, about their good luck that the Prydwen had shown up just in time for them to be able to make something of their lives away from their junk stall in Rivet City.

  
“Danse, you comin’ to play beer pong?” Haylen’s voice breaks into his reverie. She’s drunk, clearly - swaying on her feet with a slight slur to her words. Hell, even if there wasn’t, the prospect of Danse joining in beer pong is so laughable Rhys would probably call her trashed straight off the bat.

  
“No thanks, Scribe,” he mutters. Haylen squints at him through her drunken haze.

  
“C’mon, you can’t just sit there all night. It’ll be fun, you know it will.”

  
“I’m fine, Haylen, really.”

  
“C’mon Haylen, you know Danse can’t move, what with the giant stick up his ass an’ all,” Rhys chips in with a grin. Danse half-smiles back at the jab, taking a hearty swig of his beer to cover the blush heating his cheeks. The headache’s subsided enough that he could probably give back as good as he gets, but Rhys’s hand has already snuck into Haylen’s and he’s dragging her off to the beer pong table, and Danse can’t bear to disturb them. That’s what a relationship should look like, not- whatever he has with the ghoul. It’s ridiculous to even refer to that as anything close to a relationship, really. _Relations_ , maybe, at a push. And what would Cade say to that, huh? Sexual relations with any species considered non-human. _You’d be surprised at how many times the answer to that question has been yes_ , he can hear him muttering. Danse’d always been disgusted with the recruits who admitted their proclivities, disgusted by the idea of ghoul flesh or metal synth parts touching good, normal, _human_ skin. Until Goodneighbor at least. And then the revulsion turned inward, at the thought of Cade asking _Danse_ that question and expecting the truth.

  
“You sure you’re okay there, Danse?” It’s Ingram now, perched as best she can by the couch. And look what the Brotherhood have done for Ingram, giving her the chance to walk again where, left to the wasteland’s devices, she would have been eaten by super-mutants before anyone stopped give her a hand up. And Danse is squandering all of that, for some short-lived sexual pleasure-

  
No. Not pleasure. He did what he did back in the bunkroom because he had to, that’s all. Because if he hadn’t, the ghoul would have gone blabbing to Maxson, and although Danse knows he could’ve talked the Elder round, eventually, it wasn’t worth the wasted time. It was a time-saving move, that’s all. Efficient - giving Hancock what he wanted to ensure Danse’s continued survival and happiness. Taking measures to look out for himself.

  
_I’m not gonna tell anyone._

  
But he might’ve, and then where would Danse be? Explaining to Maxson on the bridge why he shouldn't be exiled? Getting spat at by Rhys for being such a disgusting specimen of humanity, of a Brotherhood paladin?

  
_You knew that from the start._

  
“I’m fine, Proctor. Actually, I think I should head off to sleep. Long day,” he excuses, and gets to his feet. Ingram gives him a strange look but lets it go, and when he passes by Rhys and Haylen to reach the door they only grin and wave, too caught up in frivolity to notice the absent way he scrubs at his temples.

  
Back in his room, Danse thinks of stripping the bedsheets and climbing onto the bare mattress to sleep. The ghoul’s hands have been on his sheets now, clenched tight in them when Danse flicked his tongue against his balls and fuck it’d serve Danse right to have to sleep without blankets. But the day catches up to him and the headache’s back to being a dull throb at the base of his neck, slowly working its way upwards, and Danse strips to his underwear and slips under the covers without much of a second thought.

  
His sleep is fitful, as always. The alcohol has taken the edge off the anxiety that rises to gnaw at him come nightfall, but slumber is always a faraway thing. By two a.m. he’s managed a half hour uninterrupted, until he hears faltering footsteps outside his door and what sounds like someone’s palm slamming on metal. Then a voice, low enough that he almost misses it.

  
“Hey, Danse. You awake in there?” Haylen asks. The last syllable of his name is drawn put in a drunken hiss, and he can imagine the pleased grin on her face at her own subtlety.

  
Danse sighs and drags himself out of bed to get the door, reacting immediately when Haylen stumbles into him with an arm around her waist to steady her. The scribe’s wearing a ratty robe and slippers - Danse has never seen anyone outside of the occasional farming settlement wearing slippers before - her hair in disarray, and her eyes are unfocused when she looks up at him.

  
“I thought you were with Rhys,” Danse says pointlessly, voice thick with interrupted sleep. Haylen isn’t supposed to see him like this, it’s hardly _proper_ , but she calls Danse her friend so maybe it can be excused just this once, while the beer’s still taking the edge off his migraine.

  
“I was. Bastard got me all the way out of my underwear before he passed out and started snoring in my face,” she smirks. “Not even sure I’m interested, if I’m honest with ya. He was just there, y’know? Between you and me, the guy’s an asshole.” Haylen presses a finger to her own lips and hisses out a long, exaggerated _shush_ and a giggle - Danse is pretty certain she’s never giggled in front of him before.

  
“Perhaps you should go to bed yourself, Haylen. Sleep it off.”

  
This only makes her laugh harder. “Oh, Danse, don’t worry! I’m not coming onto you, either. You and your weird notions about fraternisation, God. Is that why you picked the ghoul, then? ‘Cause he’s not Brotherhood?”

  
Danse’s heart stutters to an abrupt halt in his ribcage, and Haylen appears to sober a little, freezing with a hand to her mouth as if realising her mistake.

  
“Shit, I’m sorry, Danse. I didn’t mean- I mean it’s fine. With me. I’m not gonna tell on you, or anything. I’m just glad you’re- well, I mean I hope you’re happy. Thing is, you don’t seem so happy, Danse. Your headaches are back, aren’t they? Look, I just wanted you to know that not everyone here’s so against non-humans. That’s why I came. That, and Rhys snores really loudly. With his mouth open, see?” Haylen’s preceding impression of a honking snore is almost enough for Danse to laugh it off with her, but he remembers her mouth curl around the word _ghoul_ and feels the bottom of his stomach turn over again.

  
“There’s nothing going on with any ghoul, Haylen. I don’t know where you got this idea from, but if he’s been poisoning your mind-“

  
“Nobody’s poisoning anyone, Danse. I saw you two together before-“ Oh fuck, did he leave the door ajar? He’s not that stupid, surely, he would have locked it and triple checked, and they were quiet enough not to arouse any suspicion, surely-

  
“-on the flight deck, arguing. Nothing quite like a lovers’ tiff, is there?”

  
“Haylen, whatever you think you saw-“

  
“I didn’t come here to accuse you of anything, I swear. I just- you always seem so sad, Danse. And I get it, after Cutler. After everything. You deserve more than that.”

  
“I… thank you, Haylen,” Danse mutters eventually. “It’s appreciated. But-“

  
“No buts,” Haylen tells him, patting his cheek lightly. “Unless you wanna talk _actual_ butts. In that case go right ahead.” With a final giggle, she slips from his room and down the corridor to her own quarters, leaving Danse standing in his underwear by the bed.

  
_Blasted day_ , he thinks, and doesn’t sleep all night.

* * *

  
Maxson calls for him early the next day. Danse has just finished his workout and he’s still in gym sweats when a knight pops around the door.

  
“Maxson’s looking for you,” she says. Danse swings a towel around his shoulders and nods to her, feeling familiar bile rising at the back of his throat. This is it then. He’s going to be dismissed. All that training and all that potential, wasted. He’s going to lose his whole family, everything he’s worked for, because of one freak who he let get too close. He imagines himself trawling the streets of a Commonwealth settlement with growing dread. An ex-Brotherhood paladin has no place among ragged farmers - they’ll skin him alive.

  
Arthur Maxson’s pacing is the envy of every Brotherhood soldier aboard the Prydwen. The kind of fear Maxson can instil with a good heavy tread, others couldn’t hope to achieve with voices raised to a scream, eyes flashing fire. To see Maxson pacing when Danse arrives, kitted out in full uniform, isn’t a good sign, and Danse feels his heart sink to his boots. He stands to attention anyway, hands folded neatly at the base of his spine, uniform crisp and zipped up to his collarbone. If he’s getting kicked out of the Brotherhood, he might as well do it with dignity. Danse briefly wonders who sold him out - the ghoul, or Haylen? - but it doesn’t much matter anyway, not now that he’s here in front of the Elder with sweat pooling between his shoulder blades.

  
“Paladin. Good to see you,” Maxson says. Not what Danse had been expecting, but perhaps he wants to soften the blow, or watch Danse feign ignorance only to unleash whatever disgust is brewing beneath the surface later.

  
“Elder,” Danse grits out.

  
“I suppose you know why you’re here.”

  
_Fuck._ He can’t do it - can’t stand here and admit he’s fucked a ghoul to Maxson’s face. He’ll die of humiliation right here in this control room.

  
“Your new recruit seems to be performing well, Danse. But I’m not sure where her true loyalties lie. Bringing aboard those freaks highlighted that all too well.”

  
Danse’s breath flushes out of him in a _whoosh_. Maxson only wants to talk about Nora. Danse is her sponsor, it’s only natural, of course. He corrects his posture before he can slump out of relief, pleased when Maxson only continues to pace.

  
“I want you with her at all times, Danse. Make sure any unsavoury connections she has aren’t dangerous. I assume she’ll provide you with lodgings somewhere - see to it she doesn’t betray us. Last thing we need is an Institute spy on our hands.”

  
“It’s hardly my place to question you, Elder, but are you sure this is wise? She’ll suspect me if I’m tailing her twenty-four hours a day-“ _And Danse isn’t sure he can trust his rational mind to overthrow his arousal twenty-four hours every day with the ghoul so close._

  
“Why should she? You’re her sponsor, her trainer. If she’s truly worthy of her rank, she’ll accept it. Besides, you don’t need to stalk the woman. Just stay close, at one of these settlements she’s set up with the Minutemen, perhaps. You can try your hand at harvesting mutfruit. I’ll send someone down to brief you on your next mission when I have the details myself.”

  
“Of course, sir.”

  
“That’s all, Danse. Dismissed.”

* * *

  
Kellogg is dead by Nora’s own hand.

  
She looks down at the man’s body, the scar dissecting his face in bloody rouge, head bashed in with the butt of her rifle and scarlet spattering the tiles beneath his body. His eyes are still open.

  
“Nora, doll, you alright?” Nick’s voice comes from somewhere far away. Shaun is ten years old, and Nora’s missed almost the entirety of his childhood, and Kellogg is dead but so is Nate, and suddenly it’s all too much.

  
“Nick, I can’t-“

  
“It’s alright, sweetheart. He can’t hurt anyone anymore.” Nick’s good arm slides around her shoulders, suddenly wracking with sobs Nora’s never been any good at containing. She imagines Shaun - her baby Shaun - bundled in her arms in his favourite blanket, the one with the planets on, and she can almost feel the centuries that have kept them apart.

  
“Ten years I missed, Nick. I wish I could kill him all over again.” Nora scrubs at her face with the sleeve of the shirt she’s wearing - two sizes too big and crusty with Kellogg’s blood. There’s no use crying about it - she needs to man the fuck up and find her son, and the man lying dead in front of her has only driven that home. There should be a trace of guilt, shouldn’t there, nagging at the back of her neck where it usually resides when she’s smashed a man to pieces, but it’s conspicuously absent. Mother’s instinct and all.

  
“We’re going to find Shaun, Nora,” Nick tells her, still patting her shoulder. His presence at her back is a comfort, heavy and warm, the whir of his internal fans breaking the awful silence that’s descended on the room. Nora finds her guilt, then, because she suddenly wishes MacCready were here instead.

  
“How, Nick? He’s gone. The Institute has Shaun and Kellogg’s dead and-“

  
“We can find something around here, doll. I’ll have a hunt around here, you go check the terminals for clues,” Nick offers. He’s only doing it so she doesn’t have to see the body, of course, because good old Detective Valentine probably expects Nora, the perfect pre-war housewife, to be torn up even though she’s already killed countless raiders on the way here, and they were people too, right? Just because she didn’t stop in the street to have a conversation with them doesn’t mean-

  
“I’m a bit more familiar with synths, s’all, doll,” Nick continues. She almost deflates with the guilt - she knows Nick, she knows he doesn’t underestimate her, only ever builds her back up while he makes self-deprecating jokes about his own physiology. She could hug him.

  
They find the evidence they need, eventually, the hope in Nora’s stomach blooming a little more with every entry she downloads to her Pip-Boy. Sure, sometimes she wants to rip the damn thing off her arm because it still smells like the damn vault, but it has its uses. Nick fishes a computer chip out of Kellogg’s brain, grey matter still dangling from the circuitboard, and wipes the blood off on his own coat.

  
“What if Shaun’s not okay? What if they’ve hurt him, Nick? He’s just a little kid still, and he probably isn’t going to recognise me now-“

  
“Nora. Hey. Calm down. You’re fine,” Nick says, a hand on each of her shoulders now. “Shaun’s still your kid, and we’re gonna get him back. I swear it. We’ll make this right.”

* * *

  
Mac’s already pacing Sanctuary by the time Nora and Nick get back from the Memory Den. Nick’s still shaken from Kellogg’s influence, Nora can tell, and to be honest the first hint of cold steel in amber eyes had freaked her out a bit too, shaken her from her numbness at reliving her son being taken from her all over again. He’d been fine the whole walk home, but there’s still a niggle at the back of her mind that screams _be careful_ , even though Nick wouldn’t hurt her in a million years, even though Nick deserves _better_. Deserves a better partner than a housewife who still shakes uncontrollably after a battle, who had to put her head between her knees the first time she shot someone because her vision started pulsing white.

  
“Nora, you alright?” MacCready murmurs as soon as she gets close enough. He’s healed up almost completely now, only slightly favouring one leg, and when he draws her close it’s like coming home for the first time in two hundred years.

  
“No,” she says, honestly. She can sense Nick backing off behind her and can’t even bring herself to call after him; he’s probably better off going to find Hancock anyway, so he can get a proper hug and some real reassurance, instead of whatever pitiful platitudes Nora can dredge up from her lawyer days. And God, it’s been so long - all the years building up between who she used to be and who she’s pretending to be, months of maternity and motherhood and cryostasis and now killing and walking endless miles - that even they seem to recede away from her, and Nora the Lawyer has faded into Nora the Ghost, who weakens at the sort of bloodiness Nate used to long for.

  
They find themselves curled up on a rotten couch with Mac’s arm still drawn around her shoulder. Nora tips her face up to look at him, the dark shadows underneath his eyes and stubble growing at his jaw, how the past few weeks must have aged them both. “How did you do it? Leave D.C.?” she asks eventually. She’s been building up to it for a while, wished she had some way to call him when she was halfway across the state, but MacCready probably has no notion of a cell phone, anyway.

  
“Y’mean leave Duncan behind? With great f- freaking difficulty. But I knew I had to. He was getting so sick, I couldn’t just sit there and watch. I’d like to say it was all for him, but I know I was being selfish too, ‘cause I couldn’t bear to see him like that.”

  
“He’s your kid, Mac. That isn’t selfish, it’s normal,” Nora tells him. MacCready only shakes his head.

  
“Look at the lengths you’re going to to find Shaun, Nora. I’m busting my a- backside to find this cure, sure, but if I were better I’d have found it by now. You’ve only been in the Commonwealth a couple months and you’re already done so much more for Duncan than I ever have.”

  
“That’s not true,” Nora hisses immediately. “You came all the way to Boston for your kid, Mac, you’ve gone through so much just to survive, and we’re gonna get to Med-Tek and Duncan’s gonna be okay, you hear me? He’s gonna be fine. But I- I’ve been putting this all off, finding Shaun, so I could help Preston, and then so I could help the stupid Brotherhood, and now all this crap with the Railroad… I feel like I could’ve found a more direct path if I’d tried hard enough.”

  
“Nora… It hurts. I get that. But you’re gonna run yourself into the ground if you keep on like this. It’s okay to have a breather. I know you don’t think you’re doing enough - trust me, I get that,” MacCready echoes. “The day I left, I could barely even say goodbye. Here’s the kid who learned to shoot a pistol when he was three, with his no-good ex-Gunner father and dead mother - that’s the kind of kid this wasteland is churning out, and he gets sick on top of that? It’s not fair, Nora, it’s not. And sometimes I wonder if it’s my fault, that Duncan got sick because he had such an asshole for a father, some kind of divine justice. I’m trying to be better, but what if he dies anyway? Because of me?”

  
“That’s ridiculous,” Nora says, outrage finally usurping the numbness covering her body. “Duncan’s a good kid, and you’re a good father. Besides, by that logic, what does that say about me? About any of us in this damn apocalypse?”

  
Mac sighs, giving in and resting his chin atop Nora’s head. Good thing she’s fairly short, else he wouldn’t be able to reach, Mac joked once. It feels safe, comforting, with him surrounding her, and suddenly she’s so glad she has him, so glad he understands, even if that makes her an awful person.

  
“Nora, what happened out there? With Valentine? Did you find that Kellogg guy?” he asks, voice hardly above a whisper.

  
“Yeah. We found him. He’s dead now.” She doesn’t even cringe away from the look in MacCready’s eyes, because she knows she’ll only find understanding and perhaps some fury on her behalf there. It’s crazy how she’s found someone to understand her even two hundred years into her own future - and doesn’t it say a lot about Nora that some guy in an irradiated apocalypse gets her more than Nate ever did?

  
“Shit, Nora,” Mac lets slip. “Did you find Shaun? Is he alright? Where-“

  
“The Institute have him.”

  
“What?!”

  
“I don’t know where he is, Mac. He could be anywhere in the godforsaken world without his momma and I can’t even get to him.”

  
“But I thought you and Valentine-“

  
“Nick’s helping. We found a synth component in Kellogg’s head. Downloaded his memories like a fucking computer - there’s a scientist somewhere in the Glowing Sea with Institute ties. Kellogg couldn’t have gotten to him first, so I’m pretty sure that’s where our next lead is, after we head to Med-Tek.” She sighs a world-weary sigh, slumping forward to rest her forehead on MacCready’s shoulder. “What if this is it forever? Following endless leads that don’t get us anywhere? What if this scientist is just another dead end, Mac?”

  
“These aren’t dead ends, sweetheart,” he tells her, and the nickname makes something inside her weak. “We’re getting closer, I can feel it. And one day, when we’re living it up somewhere in Diamond City with both our kids in tow, this’ll all be worth it.”

* * *

  
Paladin Danse makes a true Brotherhood entrance to Sanctuary in a vertibird. The vehicle hovers just above the tree-line and Danse makes a leap for it decked out in full power armour, landing hard enough to shake the birds from the trees and Dogmeat scrambling out of his dog-house into Nora’s arms.

  
Nick watches the scene with faint interest. What he’s seen of the paladin before hasn’t exactly enamoured the man to him, but he and Hancock are so far entangled that Nick can grin and bear him, so long as there’s no laser rifle jammed up in his face plates again. Still, it’s a shock to see him looming tall amongst the houses of old Sanctuary Hills, and he’s half-thankful Hancock is busy ignoring him, popping Mentats and trying to make sense of Nora’s old law books in an empty house, so he doesn’t have to see the blank look in the paladin’s eyes when he marches straight for Nora.

  
“Soldier,” Nick hears him greet stiffly. “Elder Maxson ordered I be stationed here for the foreseeable future. I’m here to assist with anything you need for your quest to overthrow the Institute.”

  
Ah, crap. Not a flying visit then. Nick attempts to look casual lounging against the bough of a nearby tree, but it’s real difficult to do _casual_ when you’re an old synth whose joints squeal in oily protest at any wrong move. He tugs his hat down to cover his eyes just in case, sensors straining to catch the remnants of their conversation.

  
“Well, feel free to find a bed around here, Danse, and there’s plenty food to go around. Not sure how much help you’ll be, though - we’re pretty much sorted in terms of assistance.”

  
“Anything you need, Knight. I’ll make myself useful.”

  
“Right. Well, I won’t be sticking around for much longer - we’re off into Boston at first light tomorrow. You can always help Preston hold the fort here, though.”

  
Nick levers himself up and starts to walk over to where he left John, propped up in an armchair with a book in his lap. Hancock looks up when Nick enters, a part-smile, part-grimace lifting the corners of his mouth, and pats the arm of the chair for the synth to sit down. There’s a furious glint in his eye that says he’s had more than just Mentats.

  
“Bad news, doll,” Nick grumbles. Hancock only keeps smiling lazily, tugging Nick down by the collar for a kiss, tasting more of pills and alcohol than Nick’d like.

  
“Already heard our good paladin shippin’ in, if that’s what you mean. Flung down from the giant airship in the sky.” The law tome in his lap is slammed shut with enough force to startle Nick, if he was still organic. “Been meanin’ to talk to ya about what happened up there, actually.”

  
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, sweetheart. Thought we already had this worked out.”

  
They haven’t spoken about what happened, not yet. Nick had tried his darnedest to broach the subject on the long walk back from Boston airport, but Hancock had changed the topic - first to whether radstorms make super-mutants swell up to balloon-size, and then to whether or not you could program chem addiction into Gen-1s. Later, Nick had tried before Hancock went to sleep, when they were curled up together in some abandoned shelter outside of the city, but John just squeezed his eyes shut and pretended to snore, which was hard to believe considering his own lack of nose.

  
“Nicky, much as I’d rather skip whatever awkwardness this conversation’s sure to bring in abundance, I don’t think me goin’ off to fuck Danse while you hang around is really the answer.” It’s partially the Mentats talking, Nick knows. Isn’t like John to use such big words. But there’s something burning in his black eyes that’s all Psycho.

  
“You two were involved before I came on the scene-“

  
“That ain’t true and you know it, Nick. Been into you since I was old enough to know what fucking was.”

  
“Well it isn’t like you can fuck me anyway, John.” Nick doesn’t mean to snap, he really doesn’t. But after all these days of sullen silence the words come out of him in a rush - he’s cussed at Hancock, because hell, maybe that’s what Hancock likes after all, if he’s going after Danse-

  
He should stop this train of thought right there. Nick isn’t jealous. He wants Hancock to be happy, and seeing Hancock with Danse doesn’t make Nick _unhappy_ , per se. But he’s fairly certain, by the edge of Psycho-fuelled rage in the set of Hancock’s jaw, that their relationship isn’t all peaches and rainbows, even after they returned from the Prydwen and Hancock had that sappy little smile on his face.

  
“If it’s the fucking that’s hurtin’ ya, we can-“

  
“-It’s not that-“

  
“-find a way to get you off, if ya want. Whatever I had with Danse isn’t more important, Nicky. And I wouldn’t have left you if you hadn’t-”

  
Nick sighs, a long world-weary sigh. Nothing they can do, orgasm-wise, that he hasn’t tried himself a dozen times and honestly it’s been so long that he’s used to it, sad as that sounds. And, Nick tells himself sternly, it isn’t about that.

  
“Look, there was something different about you, the other day. All those other times, when you’d sneak into Diamond City and loiter around my office, it wasn’t hard to see you were unhappy, John. But this time… you came outta there with that little smile on your face, like something changed…”

  
“I don’t wanna talk about it-”

  
“Danse did that, Hancock. He made you happy, somehow. I don’t wanna get in between whatever you two have, but I’d like you to be honest with me, doll-”

  
“You ain’t in between anything, Nick. I don’t- You deserve better than this.” Hancock sighs, standing up so abruptly the book he’s holding falls to the floor with a thump, blowing up plumes of pre-war dust, and says suddenly, “He was different. It was like- like he gave a shit. A little. At the end.”

  
“John-” Nick’s heart breaks for him then. Hancock acts tough on the outside but there’s something fragile at his core, fostered by years of harsh parenting and eventual rejection at the hands of his brother, and then the chems and the running off to Goodneighbor and then all those years of self-loathing. Nick stands too, slides his arms around John’s waist and holds him there.

  
“I love you, Nick,” Hancock huffs eventually, voice thick with something close to tears. “I don’t love him more. I just- I love both of you, even though he’s a slimy bastard and it’ll never work out.”

“Wouldn’t blame you if you chose him, doll. You’re much better off with a flesh and blood human anyway, even if he is Brotherhood-“

  
“Aw, Nick, don’t start with that crap. Flesh and blood, metal and wiring… ain’t no big difference, really. S’all connected to make your body run smooth. Hell, I ain’t the prettiest sight in the Commonwealth, love,” Hancock sighs, snuggling further into Nick’s shoulder. “Don’t really expect you to be okay with any of this, though.”

  
“I knew what I was getting into from the start, John. I knew you loved him too. And if he’s finally realising what a good thing he’s got, then fair enough. S’long as he’s treating you right, I haven’t got a problem with the ol’ tin can. ‘Sides, I told ya before - it’s the end of the world, love. No room for marriage and 2.5 kids between all the radroaches and ferals.”

  
He gets a laugh out of Hancock at that, finally. The other man deflates a little, still clinging to Nick’s shoulder, and flops backward onto the couch.

  
“For what it’s worth, if Danse decides to man up and realise how much of a fool he’s been to mess you around… I’m here for you. Both of you. I ain’t gonna pretend I like the guy, but maybe spending more time with Nora will bring him to his senses a little. Woman tends to do that to people.”

  
“Thanks, Nicky,” Hancock grins. “Can’t imagine that metal asshole softenin’ to anyone, much less Nick Valentine: Synth Detective. But hell, if molerats can fly once…” 

* * *

  
Danse’s first night in Sanctuary is… strange. It’s strange to be lacking the hum of an engine beneath his feet, for one, and strange to be surrounded by settlers sporting flannel shirts rather than sentinels in power armour. He feels out of place here - he can see the sideways glances he gets from Nora’s freak friends, like they’re sizing him up for something. The ghouls probably want to eat him alive, and that isn’t even taking into account the tame super-mutant she has guarding the perimeter.

  
Nora herself leaves shortly after sunset. Strange for her to be travelling by night, but she leaves with a younger man sporting a hat and a sniper rifle, so he can’t say anything about her not being protected enough. He’d offer to accompany them - Maxson probably intended for Danse to follow on her heels - but he’s tired from the early start and the sniper’s arm is around Nora’s shoulders and he feels like a third wheel all over again.

  
Danse hasn’t seen Ha- the ghoul yet. It’s for the best, obviously, else who knows what Danse might do. A lovely scenario involving his laser rifle and Hancock’s face swims into view, only to dissipate at the thought of his teeth in the other man’s neck, gun discarded at his feet. Better: the barrel of his rifle jammed between the ghoul’s teeth, Danse’s finger on the trigger-

  
He has to stop with that fantasy too at the unexpected stirring in his pants.

  
“You plannin’ on making yourself useful, Paladin?” a voice startles Danse out of his reverie. He turns to find the dark-skinned Minuteman from the gates looking down at him, musket in hand. If it wasn’t for the use of his proper title Danse would assume he’d been mistaken for another lowlife settler.

  
“Just point me in the right direction,” Danse forces out through gritted teeth. The only thing he’d dub _useful_ in this settlement full of freaks would be taking a torch to the place, but Preston’s always been nice enough so he keeps his mouth clamped shut. He probably wants Danse to harvest crops or help the man in dungarees with house repairs. Something awful and mundane, probably. Danse is starting to feel useless already, and he’s only been here half a day.

  
“You can walk the perimeter if you want. Got Strong manning the gates, but there’s always chance of a threat out back by the old Vault.”

  
It’s still a menial task, but better than the alternatives, Danse thinks. He’s on his feet before Preston can say another word, stalking off towards the southern cul-de-sac with the air of a man who knows what he’s doing. Night is falling quickly - the only light coming from the moon overhead and a few bulbs Nora must’ve strung up and connected to one of her generators. Almost too dark to see his hand in front of his face once he gets down to the worst of the abandoned houses, the ones nobody uses.

  
Danse blames the lack of light for the fact that he doesn’t spy Hancock until the ghoul’s right in front of him, and he stumbles to a stop too late to feign ignorance and walk in the opposite direction. Hancock looks up at him with those huge black eyes, only visible by the glow of a lit cigarette clamped between ruined lips, and instead of thinking _freak_ as would only be natural, like he’s supposed to, Danse can only think _home_.

  
And _fuck._ He thought he was fucked up before.

  
“Well, well, if it ain’t Paladin Danse,” Hancock grins, taking an audible drag on the smoke. Danse’s hands involuntarily clench into fists at his sides.

  
“Ghoul,” he greets stiffly. He needs to extricate himself from this situation as efficiently as possible, because Hancock’s leaning ever so slightly closer and the smell of cigarette smoke and Jet fumes is almost overpowering.

  
“Y’know, you don’t have to bother with the pretence. We’re the only ones out here.” There’s the hint of a genuine smile twitching at Hancock’s mouth now, like he’s waiting for Danse to give up on their little game and kiss him there. The arrogance of it makes Danse’s blood boil.

  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  
“Oh, c’mon Dansey. You and me both remember what happened back in your room. We know the taste of ghoul cock turns you on.”

  
There’s something acerbic in his tone now, overpowering the thrum of arousal that sings through Danse at the words. Hancock’s still staring at him, willing him to break the sullen silence that’s fallen, only Danse doesn’t know what to say.

  
“That why your precious Elder sent you down here to live with the masses? Figured out you like your men served irradiated?”

  
“Fuck you,” Danse manages finally, shoving the other man backwards. Hancock only laughs, catching himself before he can stumble over the kerb, cigarette still in hand.

  
“Touched a nerve there, huh? Least out here nobody can see us. You can have anything you want here, Danse, with no-one the wiser come morning.”

  
“I _want_ you to leave me alone. Back off, ghoul, before I show you what the Brotherhood _really_ trained me for.” Danse almost draws his gun then, but Hancock does thankfully back off, mouth curled into a snarl.

  
“Y’know what? I take back what I said before, ‘bout you not being so bad. You metal assholes are all the same. Different when it’s you on your knees, though, huh?”

  
And with that Hancock stalks away, leaving a stunned Danse staring into the darkness after him.

* * *

  
Time in Sanctuary passes like wading through a bog. Every minute seems to stretch out for hours before Danse; the sun takes longer to rise and set, travelling caravans meander about offering lazy sales pitches. Danse spends his days cooped up inside, mostly, making repairs to his guns, or else taking watch for Preston. There’s nothing else to do unless he wants to be antagonised by the ghoul some more, and there’s still no sign of Nora’s return.

  
On the fourth day, Danse has taken over the power armour station to mod his leg plates. It’s a boring task, and not a particularly necessary one either, since his armour’s kept in peak condition, but it whiles away the hours. He’s just wiping the grease from his hands on his jumpsuit when a voice beside him says, “I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing, Paladin.”

  
Danse knows without turning that it’s the synth. Nick Valentine. No human has a voice like that, with all its mechanical lilts and inflections.

  
“Don’t speak to me, synth. I thought I told you before, I don’t associate with _your_ kind.” Because Danse knows where he’s seen Valentine before, now - he should’ve known it on the Prydwen. Frozen in a similar stance, with Danse leaning over the armour frame and the synth sidling up beside him, taking him off-guard, poking his ugly nose into Danse’s disgusting affair.

  
“Well tough luck, buddy, ‘cause this synth has a bone to pick with you. You might go around acting like you own the place with all your Brotherhood cronies, but you don’t just get to tread all over people in your T-60 and not face the consequences.”

  
“I don’t have a clue what you’re bleating on about, synth, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to be left alone-”

  
“What is it with you and pretending to be stupider than you look?” Valentine sighs, amber eyes glinting furiously. “You’re treating Hancock awfully, you know that? Guy might act hard on the outside, but you’re hurting him pretty deep. He deserves better.”

  
For a second Danse considers telling Nick Valentine that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but to do so seems like it’ll only be adding insult to injury. Instead he gazes down at his feet and mutters, “I know.”

  
They’re both stunned into silence. Danse thinks he can hear a whirring sound, probably coming from the synth’s internal fans - they’d dissected enough Gen-2s on the Prydwen to know their inner workings pretty well. Perhaps it’s the coolant system, or an overload somewhere regarding insulation, which seems strange considering the holes littering Valentine’s face-

  
Nick breaks first, forcibly clamping his open jaw shut with a _click_. He was probably expecting a spiel on feral ghouls and how they can snap at any time, how they’re a blight on the human race. Danse doesn’t blame him - he’d been half-certain that’s what was going to come out of his mouth.

  
“Then stop being an idiot and _be_ better, dammit. For some reason you make him happy, least when you pull that stick outta your ass.”

  
For the second time in a week, Paladin Danse watches someone walk away from him with his heart in his throat.

* * *

  
The rest of Danse’s days in Sanctuary are spent in a daze. Nora returns a few days later from her expedition with the sniper, who he finds out is her lover, much to his disgruntlement. Danse has always prided himself on maintaining a professional distance with his fellow soldiers, especially with those of a lower rank, and to suddenly be in possession of this information throws him. Still, it’s hard to miss when she kisses the man goodbye and stalks over to find the gh- Hancock.

  
She leaves again shortly after with Hancock in tow, and his absence leaves Danse feeling even emptier. He spends his days farming, taking over shifts at the guard posts when he can, and running laps around the neighbourhood in lieu of an actual fitness regime. He mostly avoids the other settlers - Preston makes half-hearted small talk when they’re on duty together, and Danse managed to wow Sturges with some of his more interesting armour mods - but he’s mostly alone.

  
He’s taken up residence in one of the houses out back where nobody will bother him, as far away from Nick Valentine as he can possibly manage. He’s been stewing over what the synth said for a week now, and he’s no closer to resolving his warring feelings than he was a month ago, when he’d fucked Hancock over his bed in Goodneighbor.

  
Realistically, of course, he knows nothing beside desperate fucking under the cover of darkness can ever happen between them. He’s a paladin with the Brotherhood of Steel, for Atom’s sake - he’d be cast out. Made a laughing stock, a legend for the squires to gawp at after lights out. And he’s not prepared to give any of that up, not for anyone.

  
But, an irritating fraction of Danse’s mind argues, why would he have said what he had to Valentine? Why in hell would those words ever come out of his mouth - with permission or not - if they weren’t a bit true?

  
“Awful lot’a thinking going on in there, Danse,” Preston tells him with a chuckle. They’re on the main gates together, watching the super-mutant fight off a pack of rabid dogs that have gotten too close to the perimeter. The dogs are no match for the hulking green beast, of course - they’re picked off one by one until the freak is slathered in their blood. It makes Danse’s stomach churn.

  
“It’s nothing.”

  
“Doesn’t look like nothing to me. Something on your mind? Lover’s quarrel?”

  
Christ, is everyone in this godforsaken settlement privy to Danse’s personal business?

  
“Only I’ve seen that look on Sturges a lot. Guy’s always wrapped up in some affair of the heart.” Preston grins, and Danse finally clocks on that this is only friendly banter and not a malicious attempt to find out his dirty secrets. That’s a first, anyway.

  
“Just- It’s ridiculous.”

  
“Well, I’ve got nothing better to do than stand here and listen to you, so why don’t you go ahead? I promise it won’t be the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard today. Heard Strong reciting Macbeth outside before. Woken up by that damn ‘is that a dagger’ soliloquy again.”

  
He almost gets a laugh out of Danse at that, but he clamps down on the smile threatening to cross his face at the last minute.

  
“Say someone had been… seeing someone else, then. Hypothetically,” Danse begins, hesitant. Preston nods eagerly - this is all just a game to him, of course, something to fill the empty time on watch. “Well… say they couldn’t be together, for some reason. Say… say the guy’s parents would disown him.”

  
“Right…”

  
“And say, maybe, that they weren’t exactly… in a relationship. Maybe they don’t even like each other that much - or maybe they do, but they’re too proud to admit it to each other. Or even to themselves.”

  
“You’ve got me hooked.”

  
“This is stupid. We aren’t two housewives at a market-“

  
“Just go with it. Honestly. You’ll feel better. ‘Sides, this is all hypothetical, right? Just two guys, having a hypothetical chat.” The gleam in Preston’s eyes is still there, though, and Danse quells the irrational urge to punch him. He can’t go around settling every little problem with violence, not in a settlement as small as Sanctuary, and not when he’s still here on official Brotherhood business.

  
“So, what would you do? You’d stay under the radar, right? You’d go with the status quo.”

  
“What?!” Preston’s eyes go wide, brows tugging down into a furrow. “Hell no. I’d go for it. Look, there isn’t much good left in this damn Commonwealth. The Minutemen are trying to make it better, but… it’s a process. You gotta find the good bits where you can.”

  
“But-“

  
“Look, Sturges took me to see a movie once. That old drive-in down the road, Starlight. He’d heard this old romance was showing - someone had gotten the projector working and found some old film there. It was pretty awful, but the point was- you can’t just give up. The guy in the movie went through everything just to make the woman fall in love with him at the end, and it turned out she’d loved him all along. They both thought they couldn’t be together because they were too wrapped up in their own feelings to notice each other’s-“

  
“I was right the first time. This is stupid,” Danse huffs. The last thing he needed was Preston lamenting about some pre-war film, like a couple of schoolgirls. Danse folds his arms sullenly across his chest and turns back to watch the road.

  
“Look, all I’m saying is - if you like this person, or if you love them… Don’t let your own reservations get in the way. We’re all going to the same place in the end. Might as well fill the life we got with good stuff.”

  
Danse doesn’t relax his arms, but perhaps an idea’s starting to form. God. He hates Sanctuary.

* * *

  
A week later, Nora and Hancock are back in Sanctuary and Danse is itching in a patched up pre-war tuxedo.

  
The suit’s an ugly old thing - white shirt stained grey with age, jacket patched at the elbows, and a little too tight over his broad shoulders. He feels silly in anything that isn’t his uniform - he’s so unused to being out of it that even the shirt and jeans he’s taken to wearing around Sanctuary are unbelievably uncomfortable.

  
But for the occasion, the suit’ll do fine.

  
Danse fingers the petals of the hubflowers he’s picked, cinched into a flimsy bouquet and wrapped in an old issue of Publick Occurrences. They smell nice, at least, even if looking at them leaves a lot to be desired. He can’t really imagine giving Hancock flowers - hell, he can’t imagine much about this evening, beyond stepping out of his house and fainting dead away in the street - but if he’s laughed away, at least that’ll be an end to this.

  
He takes a deep breath, staring at his reflection in the grimy mirror above the mantel. A nervous hand flicks up to smooth his hair back - it’s getting too long after all these weeks of inactivity, away from the structure of the Prydwen. Not that he’ll have that structure much longer anyway, if tonight isn’t a total disaster-

  
Danse imagines already having made peace with the fact, and laughs at himself.

  
He doubts he’ll ever make peace with his decision. A part of him will always yearn for the Brotherhood - they’ve given him everything, and he’s done the same in return. Even these few short weeks feel like they’ve taken a chunk out of him - he misses Haylen, misses working alongside Ingram, even misses Rhys’s sly digs at him. But Preston was right, sort of, because when he’s there a different kind of chunk is missing, and maybe that one’s a bit more significant.

  
All this thinking is doing him no good. Likelihood is Hancock’ll throw the flowers back in his face and spit at Danse, and he’d deserve it. The synth was right - everyone was right, in the end - Danse has treated him like shit, and he didn’t deserve it. Even if his prejudices are well-founded - ghouls _are_ dangerous, there’s the risk of them turning feral, then there’s the drug use and the anarchy and the disregard for structure or laws - he shouldn’t have started fucking him in the first place. But it’d lit up a withered, perverted part of him, and once they fell over that ledge the first time there’d been no going back.

  
Danse huffs out one last sharp exhale, and slams the front door open, stepping out into the cool summer air. There’s music coming from somewhere near Nora’s house, and he can hear delighted whoops coming from the main street, probably the cage fighter winning some sort of bet again. It’s frightening how familiar Danse is with the place now, a bit disconcerting.

  
He starts to walk briskly towards the house he knows Hancock’s been holed up in since his return, the one he seems to share with the synth. Danse isn’t sure why, since they don’t need to sleep, but he knows better than to pry into Valentine’s affairs, since he isn’t such a bad detective after all. He’d probably pick up more about Danse than vice versa if Danse were to start snooping around, and that’s the last thing he needs, even if he could bring back useful information to Maxson…

  
_Forget Maxson. Just this once. Just concentrate on this one thing for yourself._

It’s harder than it sounds, though. Everywhere he goes he sees research opportunities for the scribes, gaps in Brotherhood patrols where they could reassign troops, abominations to take care of. It’s hardwired into him, just as it had been with Cutler, when he’d pulled that trigger on his best friend, and maybe he’d been imagining the lack of recognition in his eyes - maybe, with time, he’d regain his speech functions and fuck, maybe he’d go around reciting Shakespeare as well-

  
_Fuck, Danse. Just go. Walk. One foot forward, then the other._

  
He’d given up Cutler for the Brotherhood. He isn’t going to give up Hancock too.

  
He pauses outside their door, and then goes around to knock at the window. He can just about glimpse two shadowy figures inside, on the battered old couch - Hancock’s leaning over Valentine with an easy grin on his face, tricorn skewed on his head. A nervous flutter arises in Danse’s stomach.

  
He raises his fist to knock, and then two things happen at once. Hancock leans down to press a lingering kiss to Valentine’s synthetic lips, the synth’s hands coming up to slide around the ghoul’s neck and bring him closer; and a hand claps down heavy on Danse’s shoulder.

  
He spins around immediately to face Nora, who’s grinning up at him with cheeks pink from running.

  
“Hey, Danse. Just got word from Maxson - he wants to see us back on the Prydwen. Got another mission for us. And, good news - I think I have a way of getting into the Institute.”


End file.
